THE DEVELOPMENT OF REALISM
Ambrose Bierce, Henry James, Cesare Pavese and
Primo Levi
OUTLINE OF THE LECTURE

What is realism?

Problems and rules in realism

Texts that follow the rules

Texts that break the rules
WHAT IS REALISM?
 Largely
a C19th movement - often seen as a reaction
to Romanticism.
 Romantic literature presents life as we would like it
to be, whereas realist literature presents life as it
really is.
 Allowed
for sweeping narratives that encompassed
characters from all levels of society.
 Was
succeeded by Symbolism and Modernism at the
turn of C20th.
DEFINING REALIST FICTION
“[T]he novel is a mirror travelling
along a highway. Now it reflects the
azure skies, now the mud puddles in
the road. And the man carrying the
mirror in his basket will be accused by
you of immorality!”
Stendhal, The Red and the Black
DEFINING REALISM
QUESTIONS



–
If all literature is essentially subjective, how it
accurately represent reality?
Can realist writers be selective rather than
encyclopaedic?
If all literary representation is governed by
arbitrary conventions can any one form of fiction
is any more realistic than any other?
THE ‘RULES’ OF REALISM
Romanticism
Focuses on heightened
emotions and
extraordinary
experiences.
 Characters are often
less than
psychologically
realistic.
 Describes life as we
would wish it to be.

Realism
Evokes a sense of
common life for the
reader.
 Creates the
impression that the
characters might exist
in reality.
 Describes events as a
matter of ordinary
experience.

VISUALIZING REALISM
Caspar David Friedrich, The Wanderer (1818)
Jean-François Millet, The Winnower (c.1847)
REALISM IN THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY
On the bedside table, to the right of the bed, there is a
reading lamp with a yellow silk shade, a cup of coffee, a box
of Breton shortbread sablé biscuits on the lid of which you can
see a peasant tilling his fields, a phial of perfume whose
perfectly hemispherical base recalls the shape of the inkwells of
old, a saucer containing a few dried figs, a piece of cooked
Edam cheese, and a metal lozenge with moonstone stud-nails
set at each corner framing a photograph of a forty-year-old man
in a fur-collared jacket sitting in the open at a rustic table
groaning under a weight of victuals: a sirloin, plates of tripe and
black pudding, a fricassé chicken, sweer cider, stewed-fruit pie,
and plums in brandy.
George Perec, Life, A User’s Manual (1978)
Ambrose Bierce (1842-c.1914)
Casare Pavese (1908-1950)
Henry James (1843-1916)
Primo Levi (1919-1987)
TEXTS FOLLOWING THE RULES
Different ways for realist writers to follow the rules
of realist literature:

Narrative style

Characterisation

Focus on the concrete world
REALISM – NARRATIVE STYLE



Realist texts often have apparently omniscient
narrators, either first or third person.
First person narrators often seem to address the
reader directly – gaining their trust as in James’s
story.
Lack of dramatic events – often the really key
events (the death of Cilia, the misfortune of the
Monarchs) played out ‘off-screen’.
CHARACTERISATION
JAMES
– HENRY
When the porter’s wife, who used to answer the housebell, announced, “A gentleman and a lady, sir,” I had, as
I often had in those days – the wish being father to the
thought – an immediate vision of sitters. Sitters my
visitors in this case proved to be; but not in the sense I
should have preferred. There was nothing at first
however to indicate that they mightn’t have come for a
portrait. The gentleman, a man of fifty, very high and
very straight, with a moustache slightly grizzled and a
dark grey walking-coat admirably fitted, both of which I
noted professionally – I don’t mean as a barber or yet a
tailor – would have struck me as a celebrity if celebrities
often were striking.
REALISM – THE CONCRETE WORLD
Hawthorne, ‘Young
Goodman Brown’ (1835)
Bierce, ‘An Occurrence at
Owl Creek Bridge’ (1893)
At one extremity of an open space,
He [...] saw the individual trees, the
hemmed in by the dark wall of the
leaves and the veining of each leaf –
forest, arose a rock, bearing some
he saw the very insects upon them:
rude, natural resemblance either to an
the locusts, the brilliant bodied flies,
altar or a pulpit, and surrounded by
the grey spiders stretching their webs
four blazing pines, their tops aflame,
from twig to twig. He noted the
their stems untouched, like candles at
prismatic colors in all the dewdrops
an evening meeting. The mass of
upon a million blades of grass. The
foliage that had overgrown the summit
humming of the gnats that danced
of the rock was all on fire, blazing
above the eddies of the stream, the
high into the night and fitfully
beating of the dragon flies’ wings, the
illuminating the whole field.
strokes of the water spiders’ legs, like
oars which had lifted their boat – all
these made audible music.
TEXTS BREAKING THE RULES
Different ways for the texts to break the rules of
realism:

Narratorial unreliability

The nature of the reality described
NARRATORIAL UNRELIABILITY –
PAVESE
Ora che, a suon di lividi e di rimorsi, ho compreso
quanto sia stolto rifiutare la realtà per le
fantasticherie e pretendere di ricevere quando non
si ha nulla da offrire; ora, Cilia è morta. Penso
talvolta che, rassegnato alla fatica e all’umiltà
come adesso vivo, saprei con gioia adattarmi a qual
tempo, se tornasse. O forse questa è un’altra delle
mie fantasie: ho maltrattato Cilia, quand’ero
giovane e nulla doveva inasprirmi, la maltratterei
ora per l’amarezza e il disagio della triste
coscienza.
THE NATURE OF REALITY - BIERCE
As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white
walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking
fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to
meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with
a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and
dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forwards with
extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a
stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white
light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a
cannon--then all is darkness and silence!
Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck,
swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl
Creek bridge.
THE NATURE OF REALITY – LEVI
Potrei raccontare storie a non finire, di atomi di
carbonio che si fanno colore or profumo nei fiori;
di altri che, da alghe minute a piccoli crostacei, a
pesci via via piú grossi, ritornano anidride
carbonica nelle acque del mare, in un perpetuo
spaventoso girotondo di vita e di morte, in cui
ogni divoratore è immediatamente divorato; di
altri che raggiungono invece una decorosa
semi-eternità nella pagine ingiallite di qualche
documento d’archivio, o nella tela di un pittore
famoso.
CONCLUSIONS
 It’s
not that easy to write realist short
fiction.
 Short
fiction from the late C19th to mid
C20th often combines elements of realism
and modernism.
 Realist
short fiction can be experimental
in form and narration.
SEMINAR QUESTIONS



How realistic is realism in these stories – is any
one of them more realistic than the others?
Which of the four stories do you think is most
engaging for the reader and why?
What is the relationship between the individual
and society in these stories?
QUESTIONS FOR NEXT WEEK



Which of the four stories do you think is the most
experimental in terms of narrative structure?
Has the relationship between narrator and
reader in these stories changed from the
relationship established in the realist and/or
naturalist stories?
How does modernist address the relationship
between society and the individual?